There has been increasing demand in the research reagent, diagnostic reagent and chemical process industries for protein-based catalysts possessing novel capabilities. At present, this need is largely addressed using enzymes purified from a variety of cultivated microorganisms, generally members of the domains Bacteria and Archaea. However, because less than 1% of naturally occurring microorganisms have been grown in culture, alternative techniques must be developed to exploit the full breadth of diversity for potentially valuable new products. We propose to develop fluorescent activated cell sorting for an extreme high throughput screening for recombinant expression clones from uncultivated organisms to discover a large number of unique, robust, specific biocatalysts for the cost effective synthesis of chiral synthons for use in production of pharmaceuticals, biological intermediates and natural products. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: and chemical process industries has already begun to grow. Growth in these fields is limited by a lack of enzyme activities useful under the processing conditions required. RBI currently provides a number of enzyme libraries for various enzyme classes (Glycosidases; Esterases/Lipases; Aminotransferases; Phosphatases) suitable for screening. This project will serve to increase the number of enzymes available from RBI with which researchers and process engineers can design new methods.